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The University of Chicago Medical Center submitted its application to the state this week for a large expansion project, including the creation of a Level 1 adult trauma center on its Hyde Park medical campus.

Community organizers scored a major victory last month when the University of Chicago Medicine announced plans to reopen a Level 1 adult trauma center at its Hyde Park campus. Progress Illinois looks at what comes next for the project and the activists who led the five-year trauma center campaign.

There is a lack of "political will" to improve the state of public housing in Chicago, participants at a roundtable discussion on the "future of public housing" argued Friday morning.

At the discussion, attended by a few dozen thought leaders in the nonprofit, academic, community development and affordable housing arenas, Breann Gala with the Metropolitan Planning Council pointed to the sluggish pace of Chicago's Plan for Transformation -- a huge undertaking launched in 2000 to relocate public housing residents to mixed-income housing units.

"There was momentum under [former Chicago Mayor Richard M.] Daley, for better or worse, whether people liked it or not, there was something happening," she said. "And I feel like now ... we're just kind of stalled in this conversation."

Sources

With the Obama presidential library set to come to either Jackson or Washington parks in Chicago, a South Side group is seeking help in crafting a proposed community benefits agreement (CBA) to ensure local residents and businesses are not displaced by the possible gentrification that could come with the project.

The Bronzeville Regional Collective, comprised of South Side organizations and community development advocates, has created a seven-point CBA blueprint for the Obama library development.

"We don't want to see the South Side become what Lincoln Park was in the '60s and '70s," said Bronzeville Regional Collective member Anton Seals Jr., who is also on the South Shore Planning and Preservation Coalition's board.

Sources

Progress Illinois provides highlights from a wide-ranging University of Chicago Institute of Politics discussion on the 2016 presidential race, featuring journalists from BuzzFeed News,US News & World Report, The New York Times and The Washington Post.